Of Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax
by Iellix
Summary: A series of standalone keyhole peeks into the lives of Alice and Hatter. Life can be--and often is--a funny thing.
1. Hell

I wrote this story ages ago but I never posted it here. I figured Hatter would have a terrified reaction to all of the horrible things that have happened—and still happen—in our world. The Queen is a pussycat when you hold her up to Erszebet Bathory. I urge you not to look her up unless you have a strong stomach.

Disclaimer: I do not own Hatter or Alice or anything else you likely find familiar.

o…o

Hatter has always thought that he's seen so much of the worst of human behaviour. The Queen and her loyalists, the Suits, Mad March and his ilk, the Tweedles, even Dodo—all of them monsters in their own way. People who kill, control, torture, hate, and destroy. He's lived in it. He knows firsthand what it's all about.

He figures he's lived in hell and survived it.

Alice's relative shock at what she found in his corrupted Wonderland convinced him that Wonderland under the Hearts was a terrible, scary place to live and that nothing else could compare. Living in constant fear of being arrested and beheaded without being given the chance to defend himself, in danger from the Resistance that he risked his neck to feed and help, in danger of being thrown to Dee and Dum and tortured forever—if not hell, what else was it?

Now he's in Alice's world, in relative safety. Or so he thinks.

For all that she's a good teacher when she knows the answer, there are still myriad aspects of her own world that she doesn't know about, and when she can't answer his questions then he goes for the library and gets lost in the books. It's here where he learns most—it's here where he learns the truth.

Sometimes the truth is terrible.

It begins with one book. One plain black-bound book.

_The Diary of Anne Frank._

He's shocked at what he reads. The words and the story cut him deep and he doesn't know what to make of them.

"Did this really happen?" He asks Alice one day, when he can't stand not knowing anymore because just because there are books about it doesn't mean that it's really real.

"Anne Frank? The Holocaust? Sure it did. Why?"

He doesn't answer. He's too shocked.

He becomes disgustingly, _morbidly_ fascinated with disaster. The Holocaust. Mass murder. Serial killers. Genocide. What is 'nine-eleven' and why is it so important? Jonestown? Waco?

The names float in and out of his head. Pol Pot. Adolf Hitler. Erszebet Bathory. Gacy. BTK. Ridgeway. Hussein.

People who wanted other people dead for no reason at all—people who _hated_ other people just for existing and killed them for it. People who tortured. People who destroyed more and did worse than the Queen of Hearts could ever have fathomed.

Pictures of disasters, of the dead, of the tortured, of destruction make his own experiences in Wonderland pale in comparison. There is a huge wide world around him and there is many thousands of years of history just like this to learn.

There is so much hate, all of it needless; the Queen, at least, never bothered with those who didn't cause any trouble. She didn't send Suits to swoop into towns and houses at night and kill everyone there just because they were _there._ She didn't torture people herself for her own enjoyment, though the Tweedles certainly did; still, even _they_ never went out looking for their own victims to play with.

The things that have happened here—the mass-disasters perpetuated by _people_ who wanted nothing more than to just kill other people. Kill. For no reason. The things that have happened in Alice's world, in Alice's _lifetime,_ so close to _where Alice lives,_ all scare him.

Wonderland is nothing.

This place has the potential to be so much worse.

Alice lives in hell.

And Hatter is determined to protect her from it.


	2. Trust

A cute little scene that I've never been able to find a place for in another story. It actually takes an enormous amount of self-control to do this.

o…o

"You don't have to explain yourself to me," Alice said. "You said you were in Wonderland. I trust you."

"Alice," he said slowly. "I've been gone. For a week. I never told you where I was going. I turned up looking like something a Jabberwocky stepped on. Aren't you even a _little bit_ concerned?"

"Well, you're not hurt, so why would I be concerned?"

He didn't know why he was trying to make her angry, except that Alice was hot-headed and sometimes she was itching for a fight and he'd gone away to Wonderland on an impulse and forgot to mention it to her and she hadn't seen him in a week and things had gotten kind of dicey what with his confrontation with the now-renegade supporters of the Queen. And she was just acting like he'd popped across the street to get a newspaper without telling her. He expected her to be livid. He even wore his body armour back through the Looking Glass in anticipating of her absolutely going off her tits at him.

But she didn't. All she did was shrug and tell him that it was fine.

"Why aren't you angry?" He asked.

"I told you. I trust you."

He'd wanted for almost their entire journey in Wonderland for her to trust him but hearing her say it now didn't make him any less confused.

"Hatter."

She put her hand on his cheek and made him look at her. Then she stood and crossed her arms over her chest; then she closed her eyes and let herself fall straight backwards.

He didn't even have to think. He lunged and caught her.

"What the _hell_ is that all about?" He demanded as she stood up.

"Because," she said. "I trust you."

Suddenly it made a whole lot of sense.


	3. Busted!

This is another scene I've had in my head for a long time; I've been waiting to use it _somewhere_ for _years_ and haven't found a place until now. Enjoy.

o…o

Sleeping in a twin bed was cramped and close, but with Hatter she didn't mind it. He was pressed up tight to her back, one arm and one leg around her, breath stirring her hair. He was warm and he smelled like sleep. It was late morning, the sun streaking in between the closed curtains.

And they were alone.

Alice didn't want to get up and disturb him. She was perfectly comfy.

She realized he was awake when he stirred and kissed her neck and traced little figure-eights on the ball of her shoulder with his fingertips.

She turned over. "Hello."

"Morning," he purred back.

Then he nuzzled her neck and she giggled when his stubble tickled her.

She heard the front door open and the alarm chime and they both sat upright with big wide eyes.

"I thought she was away for the weekend," he whispered harshly.

"She was supposed to be!" She said back.

The only reason Hatter was staying the night here was because Carol wasn't going to be here. Otherwise Alice would never have dared. It would've been painfully awkward. But she wasn't supposed to be back until the following afternoon.

"Alice?" She heard her mother call. "Are you still in bed?"

At the footsteps getting closer, Alice kicked into High Panic Mode and shoved Hatter out of bed.

"Quick, take your clothes and go hide!" She whispered, shoving his things into his arms and giving him a shove in the direction of the closet.

He squeezed into the closet just as her mother knocked on the door.

"Hang on, Mom, I'm not dressed!" She said, grabbing a bathrobe to cover up and kicking Hatter's boots under the bed.

She cracked open the door and prayed she didn't have any visible hickeys.

"You're sleeping awfully late," Carol observed.

She craned around her mother to get a look at the hall clock. It was almost noon.

"Is everything okay? You're home early," she said, trying not to sound annoyed that her mother had interrupted her marathon-sex weekend with Hatter.

"Something came up, we had to leave," she explained. "I tried to call this morning but you didn't pick up."

Pause.

"Oh," was all she could manage. She couldn't really argue with that.

Her mother made small-talk in the door for a few minutes, and Alice pretended to be interested, meanwhile remembering that Hatter was still trapped.

But thankfully she didn't seem to notice anything so she figured she was putting on a good front.

Carol turned to go back into the kitchen.

"Oh, Alice?"

"Yeah?"

"You can tell David he's free to get out of your closet whenever's convenient for him."

The blood drained out of her face and, as if on cue, Hatter stumbled out of the closet. He had his pants on backwards and his shirt buttoned wrong and the rest of his clothes clutched in his arms. Alice put her reddening face in her hands; Hatter smiled nervously. It couldn't have worked out worse if they'd planned it that way.

"Uhm… hello… Mrs Hamilton…" he said slowly, turning just as red.

"Good morning, David. Sleep well?"

"Well… yes, actually."

She wasn't sure what she expected her mother to do, but she was _fairly_ sure she would do something approaching getting angry. But she didn't; instead she just raised her eyebrows and turned to leave.

Hatter hid behind the door so he couldn't be seen.

Alice was blushing furiously.

"Mom!" She called.

"Yes?"

"How did you _know?"_

"I was young once, too, dear. I'll go put a pot of coffee on."


	4. The Young Mr Smooth

Hatter takes a rare moment and opens up to Alice, and talks about his first kiss.

o…o

All he tells her is that he has a 'less-than-excellent' track record with liking people. He doesn't go any further than that and she doesn't pry for information because if he's anything like her—and Hatter has proven to be an _awful lot_ like her thus far—he'll push her away if she starts digging too deep.

He'll tell her eventually, Alice figures. Little bits at a time, little pieces of the puzzle. Until then she knows it's best not to dwell on it. Whatever has happened to him in the past, the bad things and the scary things and the things that are his fault and the things that aren't his fault, will be revealed eventually.

They're reading on the couch, leaning back-to-back; she's working on _Peter and the Starcatchers_ and Hatter is ploughing through the fourth _Harry Potter._ He'll be working on the fifth one by tonight, she knows it. He reads like fire in dry grass.

"Her name was Olivina," he says out of nowhere.

"Huh?" She looks up, wondering if she's been having a conversation with him without realizing it. Wouldn't be the first time that happened. "Who?"

"My first kiss," he says.

She blinks and doesn't know exactly what to say back.

"You want to know," is what he says.

"What makes you think that?"

He doesn't answer her question. "She was a ginger girl. All leg. I was fourteen, she was fifteen."

She can't look at him but somehow he knows she's raising an eyebrow at him.

"There was a certain appeal in older women—and when you're fourteen, a year older might as well be a grownup. Didn't help that I was still short and she was about a head taller than I was."

Hatter as an insecure teenager conjures up all kinds of variously funny and adorable images in her mind. Alice closes her book because the story he's telling is likely going to be far more interesting than anything currently published, and she turns around to face him.

"So I stood on an incline and I kissed her and she didn't bite me so I thought I was doing all right."

"Then what happened?"

"She slapped me."

She struggles to keep from laughing—after all, why would someone do that? What heterosexual woman in her right mind wouldn't want a go at Hatter?—but fails miserably, and he looks at her with narrowed eyes and a half-grin.

"Why would she do that?" She asks around her laughter.

"She said I was kissing with my eyes open and that was a sure sign I was a predator in the making and I was dangerous to her and all of the other girls in Wonderland. She stomped off."

Now she really can't stop laughing because when she was a kid girls said the same thing about boys who kissed with their eyes open. Hatter might be an awful lot of things, but a predator he most certainly isn't.

"Go ahead and laugh," he said flippantly. "D'you have any idea how many years it was before I figured out that you can only be caught snogging with your eyes open by someone who is herself _kissing with her eyes open?"_

She giggles and snorts helplessly into the sofa cushion behind them.

"But by then Olivina was somewhere high-up with the Resistance and always carried two guns. So I let it slide."

They share a laugh at his past self's expense and he kisses her and she doesn't care whether he keeps his eyes open or closed because he's _there_ and he's _Hatter_ and frankly she's been through way too much with him to worry about what he does with his eyes or his hands while she's kissing him.

It's not the whole story of his past and she knows she might well never have the story of his whole past. But she doesn't mind. He'll tell her what he wants, when he wants, little pieces at a time. Some stories will be like this one and make her laugh; others will scare her; others still will probably make her hate him a little bit and some will make her proud of him. It's all a part of Hatter.

And as far as Alice is concerned, the good in him will always outweigh the bad.


	5. Protectors

I had a traumatic day. I got a haircut, which for me is a big deal. I'm now minus a foot of hair and I feel like I'm missing a limb. So I decided to traumatize Hatter. I'm a mean ol' lady.

o…o

She heard footsteps. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth in the darkness at the foot of the bed. Her brain took a few seconds to reboot as she forced herself awake and sat up. Through the bright blue-silver light of the full moon streaming through the curtains, she saw Hatter, one hand on his forehead, his hair a mess, his pajamas rumpled.

"Is somethin' wrong?" She murmured. "What time is it?"

"Fourteen minutes to four," he answered. Clearly he'd been looking at the clock a lot.

"How long have you been doing that?" She asked, leaning over and flicking on one of the bedside lamps. Then she squinted in pain at the light.

"Hours."

"Why?"

"Can't sleep."

"But _why?"_

Silence.

"Hatter?" She inched towards the edge of the bed, concerned that something might be desperately wrong.

"Every time I close my eyes, I keep seeing that movie in my head."

Alice had to smother her giggle.

"Oh, Hatter," she sighed. "I _told_ you not to watch that movie."

He watched 'Freaks'. She warned him not to watch it and even admitted she slept with the lights on for a week after she saw it, but he wanted to watch it anyway so she showed him where to rent a copy and left him to it. Now he wasn't going to sleep, she knew.

"I didn't think it'd be that bad," he offered lamely as a way of defending himself. "Oysters—I mean people—they actually _like_ that kind of terror?"

"Different strokes for different folks," she said. Then she shrugged. "It was just a movie. A scary one, but it was just a movie. I promise clowns won't eat you—now come to bed."

He didn't move.

She leaned forward and took his hand. "Come on," she purred.

He climbed over the foot of the bed and crawled back up to the pillows with her. He held her tight and buried his face in the back of her neck as she turned off the light.

This wasn't the time to tease him, she decided; she stroked his hair and kissed his forehead and murmured against his ear. He'd protected her in Wonderland, time and again. He protected her when Dodo and his foot-soldiers turned on them; he rescued her from Dee and Dum; he let her hold onto him for dear life when they fled the Casino on flamingos. When she was afraid of the city built too far over the ground, he gave her his hand and led her. He even took a swing at the Jabberwocky.

All for her.

It wasn't a monster or crazy people or even keeping him from being too scared of heights, but Hatter was afraid and it was her turn to protect him.

"Alice?" He whispered.

"Mm?"

"Can you turn the light back on, please?"

o…o

Now, let me just say I'm the kind of person who can watch a marathon of Hitchcock movies and then go to sleep and dream about kittens. The movie 'Freaks' gave me nightmares and I slept with the light on for an embarrassingly long time after I saw it.


	6. Bookworm

Posting two chapters to make up for the fact that I've left this story quiet for a while. Sometimes I forget I have it. Sometimes I also forget my wallet and my driver's license, and then I notice there are lots of cops on the road today. C'est la vie, I guess! This ficlet is a subtle tribute to (or a jab at, I'm not sure which) my best made, K., who is a twenty-something straight man who reads almost exclusively young adult novels aimed at teenage girls. (It's okay, I can tease him about this—and about the Jonas Brothers on his iPod—cos I love him to death.)

o…o

Hatter reads everything. He loves books, books, _books—_one of the things he wanted in return for helping the Resistance in Wonderland was access to their library. He loves words, lives on them, needs them to survive just like he needs food and water. And tea.

But he also has his favourites. He enjoys reading big thick volumes Alice calls 'textbooks' that she says people in this world use in school, which in and of itself is something Hatter finds exotic and unfamiliar because schools were the domain of the wealthy and privileged in Wonderland and not for smooth-talking conmen. He finds them fascinating, informative, and highly addictive. There's something wonderful about this kind of no-nonsense look at the world that surrounds him now.

His other favourites he found accidentally. He was reading a second-hand biology textbook and a reading list fell out. The titles—among them _'Speak', 'How to Ditch Your Fairy', 'Thirteen Reasons Why'—_intrigued him and he read through every book on the list in a week. They're all aimed at teenaged girls, and often have embarrassingly feminine covers that he covers with a blank book jacket so he can read them on the bus and the train without getting funny looks from strangers.

He likes them. They're fun to read, easy to read. Sometimes they make him laugh and sometimes they make him want to cry and sometimes they're as shockingly frank in their observations on the world as the textbooks he reads. At Alice's suggestion he tries reading adult novels and after a few of those he goes right back to the 'Young Adult' section of he library and bookstore because he prefers them.

"What're you reading now?" She asks over his shoulder one day, tilting the book so she can read the title. _"'Prom'?_ D'you even know what a prom _is?"_

"From this book it sounds like a watered-down ball for teenagers," he guesses, then he shrugs. "It's funny."

"That why you keep laughing at night when I'm trying to sleep?"

Some of the books make him laugh so hard that he's been banished from reading in bed at night because he keeps waking her up.

"I have to ask—what's the appeal?" She asks finally. "These are kid's books."

"Young adult," he corrects her.

"Still," she goes on. "I get why you like the textbooks—there's only so much I can teach you and all. But these? They're marketed for people half your age. _Girl_ people half your age. Why do you keep reading 'em?"

He has to think about that because he's not sure he can explain it.

"I dunno," is all he can say. "I like the voice. I like looking at the world through the character's eyes. Even when they're little miniature fictional cynics, it's different and fresh."

He scratches his head and wrinkles his nose and she frowns at him.

"I _am_ a grownup. I live in the grownup world all the time. I don't wanna _read_ about 'em, too. It's just more fun. I never really got to be a normal kid. Sometimes it's nice to read what it would've been like. And sometimes it's nice to know that some kids were like me and didn't get to be kids, either."

Behind him Alice shifts and she leans in to kiss his neck and he feels her smile against him.

"I didn't ask you to defend yourself or anything," she says. "I was just curious."

"Oh. Okay."

She goes into the kitchen and then calls back over her shoulder, "Can I borrow it when you're done with it?"


	7. Mr Smooth Rides Again

This isn't so much a story as it is an amusing familial anecdote applied to fanfic. Substitute 'tea' with 'beer' and it really happened to my mother when she was young and not boring. (Back during the Revolutionary War.) She puked on a guy who later asked her out. Bonus: the guy's name was David. I should just sell my life story as a sitcom or something…

o…o

Alice finds Hatter is impervious to awkwardness and embarrassment. Nothing fazes him. Nothing bothers him. Whatever happens, he just goes with it and never lets it get to him—so while Alice is turning several colours of purple after snorging him in front of her mother in the living room, he keeps his cool.

He doesn't let it bother him when he slips on the wet platform after getting off the train and ends up falling on his butt in front of the whole station, which then collectively bursts out laughing at him. He actually joins in the laughter.

When he makes embarrassing mistakes learning about her world—accidentally walking into the ladies room because he's not sure what those little signs mean, asks for a 'rubber' at the bank, uses slang terms that nobody recognizes or that are obscene on this side of the Looking Glass—it's always Alice who gets embarrassed on his behalf and Hatter never cares that he's just made an ass of himself.

"How do you do it?" She asks him finally.

"Do what?"

"How do you not care when you've made a total dork of yourself? How d'you manage to _never be embarrassed?"_

"I guess I grew out of it," he says. "I used to get embarrassed just like everyone else whenever I did stupid shit."

"And you just… what, outgrew it? Got over it?"

He gives her a shrug and then a smile that melts her knees. "Dunno. Guess I figured I had other things to worry about than getting embarrassed. You gotta laugh, even if it's at yourself. Call it a survival technique."

She frowns and narrows her eyes. It makes sense, but it doesn't. Must be Wonderland logic.

"And anyway," he adds. "If I'd decided not to do something just 'cos something bad might happen or 'cos people might laugh at me, I'd've spent the last twenty years standing in one place not moving."

Then he gives her a quick peck on the lips and another of those smiles that can make her turn to soup.

"That bad, huh?" She asks. "Mr Smooth, right?"

He laughs. "You think I'm that slick, eh?"

"Not in the least. But I like you anyway."

And then he tells her about a woman called Atalanta, the last before her; Alice has never liked hearing about those who came before her because she feels like it's competing with the past, with a ghost, but she's eager to hear this story because it isn't often Hatter will tell her about his past.

"She was a dedicated tea junkie," he recalls. "Sweet as can be, though. I met her in my shop. She was wasted."

"You didn't—"

"Of course I didn't take advantage of her!" He says quickly. "I'm not that kind of bloke. No, she was in bad shape so I took her into my office and gave her some regular tea and I was going to let her sleep it off."

She raises her eyebrows.

"Well, I didn't want to let her go out into the city in that state, did I? Anything could've happened to a cute little thing like her. I didn't want her to be alone and let something happen to her."

Her insides go all melty, now, because Hatter's tough exterior is just that—an exterior. He's the sweetest man alive and it doesn't surprise her at all that he'd've done that. What _does_ surprise her is that she's not retroactively jealous of this Atalanta woman. She doesn't even bat an eye when he calls her cute, which is unusual for her.

"Didn't go too well, though. She threw up on my shoes."

Now Alice can't help the laughter that bursts up unexpectedly from her belly. She covers her mouth with her hand.

"Better out than in, I guess. Smell never did go away."

"What happened after that?" She asks, because she can't imagine how puking on someone's shoes would lead to any kind of lasting relationship.

"I phoned her the next day to see if she was all right. She apologized."

"And?"

"And I _begged_ her to go out with me."

Something tells her she'll never completely understand Hatter.

But trying to is going to be fun.


	8. The Last American Highlander

I wrote this fic some time ago as part of a Livejournal drabble meme—set your music player to 'shuffle' and write ten drabbles to ten songs. This one was written to a song called 'American Highlander' by a bagpipe band called the Rogues.

o…o

Hatter's chosen mode of transportation on this side is a motorcycle. Of _course_ it's a motorcycle. It's so characteristically Hatter and she wasn't specific when she told him he had to figure out how to drive something besides a horse because he couldn't ride a horse down the street, even though he'd tried it once or twice because he found a stable and charmed the owner into letting him take some horses out for himself. She thought maybe he'd learn how to drive a car first, particularly since she offered to teach him.

"Do you even know how to drive that thing?" Alice demands to know when he shows it to her.

"How hard can it possibly be?"

The words sound like the idiot's mantra.

"I drove a flamingo," he reminds her.

"The flamingo doesn't have a transmission!"

"You're being nitpicky."

So Hatter learns how to drive the motorcycle. It's a horrible noisy thing that can be heard blocks away and there's absolutely no way he could surprise her if he drives it to her apartment because it can be heard clearly from the neighbouring police jurisdiction.

And then one day he _does_ surprise her.

He tosses her a helmet.

"Let's go for a ride," he says, leaving no room for argument.

Even though the bike is on the ground, it's still scary and dangerous with the road zipping past just inches from her feet and she holds onto him for dear life like she did when they were flying on those flamingos miles over the Jabberwocky's forest.

But something around the danger and the terror is exhilarating.

Just like Wonderland.

Just like Hatter.


	9. Beg

**Warning: **This chapter is **M-rated** for some sexual content. (And mentions of bondage.) As it is neither overtly explicitly detailed nor lengthy, I'm not going to raise the whole story's rating but this is the warning for those of you who wish to avoid such content.

I have no excuse for having written this except that I thought it was sexy and I was on some medication at the time for a kidney stone. Actually, I've really wanted to write a scenario like this one as a longer lemon-fic, but I don't think I could do it—it'd make _me_ blush, for goodness sake!

o…o

Hatter doesn't beg.

It's not his style. Why waste the energy pleading and trying to bargain with an unsympathetic adversary when the energy could be better spent finding a way out of the situation at hand? He didn't survive a double-agent in the Queen's Wonderland for so long by begging and pleading and whinging.

No—Hatter does not beg.

How has this happened, he wonders absently, struggling against the bonds at his wrists and not tearing his eyes away from the sight before him. He's gotten himself into a bit of a pickle again. A different kind of troublesome situation than he's had experience with, but a troublesome one nonetheless.

Alice torments him, tortures him. Oh, and she's good at it. She's charmed him and sweet-talked him enough that she's been able to tie his hands to the bedframe with the cord of her bathrobe and blindfold him and she's sitting on his legs so he's effectively immobile and totally helpless under her. His Alice, he's found, has an unnervingly uncanny ability to push all of his buttons at once. She gives him a disarmingly innocent smile—all bright-eyed sweetness and expertly feigned innocence—and has a way of catching her lower lip between her teeth that makes his normally steady resolve falter and will make him helpless to refuse her. He'll let her do just about anything when she turns on the sweet charm, just as adept at manipulating him to her will as he's been to other people his whole adult life.

He has to believe that. Otherwise it means he's a pushover and Hatter isn't a pushover any more than he's a beggar.

So he's stripped naked and tied to the bed and blindfolded so he can't see her and Alice is holding him down and she _won't touch him._ She's sitting astride his thighs, a flimsy little pair of silky knickers the only article of clothing left on her; he can feel them, silky and soft against his legs. She leans forward tantalizingly, hovering her hands and her body over him without touching him—close enough that he can feel the warmth of her body but still not actually touching him. Her mouth follows, her lips flicking feather-light and her breath warm on his skin but _still_ not actually _touching_ him.

It's torture. Exquisite torture. Hatter can cope with torture and he's done it before time and again but Alice is good at this and his resolve is faltering. Oh, she's good. It's a good job she's using her talents this way and not for some rather more nefarious purpose, because she could have the whole world at her mercy if she did.

Naked Alice comes forward far enough that she could kiss his neck but she holds herself up from him so her hips don't make contact with his and her breasts don't touch him; only the very tip of his erection, now almost painfully hard and oozing precum, touches her, pressing against her belly as she leans low.

She breathes hot air on his neck, her mouth so close, and she's naked and she's torturing him and he doesn't know if this is _wonderfully awful_ or _awfully wonderful._ A little bit of both, he thinks. He feels her shift and then there's a hand on the inside of his thigh, just the tips of her fingers, light and tickling and tantalizing. It's an unexpected touch but she's _touching_ him and he moans.

"Alice… oh, sweet Cheshire cats, Alice…"

If he wasn't otherwise occupied he might be disgusted at how piteous he sounds.

He feels the little rush of air on his ear and neck as she giggles softly, a sweet little innocent girlish giggle that's completely at odds with the seductive woman who's been tormenting him this whole time.

Again he moans, tries to squirm and arch into her; her fingers flutter on his thigh and she uses the very tips of her nails to trace an indiscernible pattern on his skin.

"You want it?" She asks lightly.

He isn't sure what 'it' is but at this point he doesn't fucking care.

"Oh _god_ yes," he moans.

Another giggle, just as innocent as the first and the sound alone nearly makes him come undone. He doesn't know how she does it but again he doesn't care—he's just going to enjoy the ride, revel in the sweet agony and delicate torture.

She nuzzles his ear ever so slightly and flicks her tongue over the lobe and that's the most she's touched him since she tied him up.

"Then beg," she whispers, barely audible.

Hatter doesn't beg—it's just not his thing. He's withstood torture of all flavours in his life and he's gotten himself out of all kinds of problems without having to plea for his life or beg for mercy. Such tactics rarely work in any situation he's found himself in—in Wonderland in general, really—so he's never done it.

Alice nuzzles his ear again and breathes hotly in his ear, "Beg for it, Hatter."

Hatter doesn't beg—but this isn't Wonderland and here he's not the Hatter.

So he begs.


	10. Centerfold

A return to my normal non-pornographic ficlets! I thought people might get a kick out of this—this was the drabble that spawned the fic 'Picture It', and ultimately the character of JD. (In this story Alice says he doesn't go for girls but that has since changed.) It was another part of the LJ drabble meme and was written to the song 'Centerfold' by the J. Geils Band. (It's also a rather more autobiographical story… yeah. My life is a sitcom.)

o…o

Absently in conversation—when it was relevant to the topic at hand—she'd mentioned that she'd never taken her clothes off _on camera_ before but she'd appeared in front of one without any on, and right away she knew that mentioning it was a mistake because Hatter immediately wanted to know what _that _was all about.

She shrugged. "A friend of mine is a photographer and I model for him every so often."

"Naked."

"Once or twice."

He waited for her to go on.

She sighed. "Don't be jealous, he doesn't go for girls and I've known him too long for that anyway."

"So what was this naked all about?" He seemed far more interested in the whole 'naked' aspect than the fact that she'd been naked with another man in the woods.

So she showed him the pictures because she kept them in a box under her bed where her mother wouldn't find them, because Carol would throw a fit if she found out her daughter had been naked on camera.

The pictures were all woodsy—Alice on trees and rocks and hip-deep in a creek with her hair dripping all over her body. None of the pictures are terribly revealing—there's a lot of strategic angling and placement of hair and arms and crossed legs, and she's shown more bare skin than that in her bathing suit, for goodness sake—but Hatter was completely transfixed, staring open-mouthed as he leafed through them. She could swear she saw him drool.

"When was this?"

"Maybe a year ago. We would've gotten more pictures but the park police found us and we had to run away. It's not technically legal to be naked in a public park."

He wasn't listening. He was too busy with the pictures.


	11. Home Sweet Home

I felt like writing something about Hatter's reaction to his new surroundings—something light-hearted and cute, without all the culture-shocks and stuff. Just Hatter taking joy in all the little everyday things he finds in his new home.

o…o

Hatter is enamoured with New York.

He loves the _sights_ and the _sounds_ and the _smells;_ he loves all the people, everywhere, all the time, from all walks of life doing all kinds of things, an eclectic mix of absolutely everything that's sometimes quite mad and never, ever boring.

He loves the chaos. Boredom has always been his enemy, something he tries actively to avoid, and here it's not hard at all. Every day there's something different, something new, something exciting. There are musicians on street corners and in subway stations, filling the crowded spaces with their music. Vendors on the street sell trinkets—obviously fake, even to his foreign eye, but sparkly and kind of nice nonetheless—and flowers and fruit and wisps of silk and pretty things. There are crazy people shouting and people talking into those little hand-held things that Alice says are phones and sometimes there are people talking and they don't even _have_ phones on them. It's the people who talk _without_ the phones, he's noticed, that look as if they're having the more interesting and insightful conversations.

He loves the friendliness of the people—for coming from the Queen's Wonderland like he has, he's not used to people being nice because they wanted to be nice. He loves that coffee shop baristas tell him to have a nice day and cheerful store employees who are all too willing to direct him to the places he needs to go when he walks into stores looking piteous and holding a map and emphasizing the accent that marks him as different from the locals.

Public transportation is to him exciting and fun, not an everyday drudgery that everyone else seems to see it as. Having freely available transport—buses, trains, taxicabs—that will take him where he wants to go and bring him back, and he doesn't have to walk alone at night or in the rain or if he's just feeling lazy and wants to nap on the way. He's used to walking and climbing and traipsing all over a confusingly vast city built thousands of feet above the ground without any real thought as to pedestrian navigation.

He loves the boundless plenitude of absolutely everything. In Wonderland even basic necessities like food were, if not scarce, then at least harder to come by than tea. Here there are people who eat more in one sitting than the refugees hiding in the Great Library would eat in a whole day. Choices and options are everywhere, limitless possibilities for every aspect of life and on every street there are flashy shops with big windows showing off wares of every kind in luxurious abundance.

He likes that the most strenuous decision he has to make from one day to another is which jacket to wear with which hat.

Here he's not in danger from anything more than some stupid punks who might try—unsuccessfully—to rob him, or taxicab drivers who think that they have the right of way on the sidewalk. Here he's not in danger from a fanatical Resistance or Suits or crazed and violent and broke tea-junkies or any of the other aspects of a world falling apart at the seams.

He loves that this is only one city in one small part of what must be an unimaginably vast kingdom—Alice calls it a 'state'—in an unimaginably vast world and that he could spend the rest of his natural life exploring it and never see the whole thing.

Mostly he loves that Alice is here, and she loves him and he loves her and she lives in this wonderful, mad city in this whole, wide, wonderful, mad world. He'd've made his home anywhere for his Alice, absolutely anywhere; wherever she makes her home, that's where he'll make his. Even the most boring little corner of this strange new world, if she lived there, just to be with her. And really, after living his life hopeless, emotionless, in a dark time in a dark place in the Queen's Wonderland, to find himself in a world where he's surrounded by so much to _love_ and _enjoy_ is new and wonderful and he's not going to take it for granted. He's going to take this—all of this, his Alice and this place—and enjoy it. All of it.

"You know they say that to everyone, right?" Alice asks him as he sips the sweet candy-coffee concoction he's bought from the corner shop from a girl with a nose piercing who cheerfully told him to have a nice afternoon. "It's a reflex for them—it doesn't mean anything."

He shrugs. "Doesn't matter. She said it. They all do. It's a lot nicer than being outright ignored or actually attacked. I love this place. Everything here is _brilliant."_

She doesn't say anything to that and instead loops her arm through his and walks close to him in silence for a long time.

"Hatter?"

"Hm?"

"D'you miss it? Wonderland?"

"I suppose so," he says. "Sometimes. But I like it here."

"Would you ever think of us going back?"

"Oh, definitely," he answers almost immediately.

"When?"

She seems to think he means immediately, that he's homesick or that he misses it or that he's having second thoughts, and none of that could be further from the truth. He kisses her, the caramel-sweetness from his drink making a sticky spot on her lips that she licks off.

He's all Wonderland and this isn't Wonderland, and there's probably no substitute for his old homeland in this world, not really. It was his _home_ and certainly he has some attachments to it,but he's not going to hold onto the other side of the Looking Glass while he's here. It's a spectacular place, New York, and he _adores_ it, absolutely loves it, and he's _happy_ here. He truly is, and he's worked too hard for Alice, lucky to have won her trust and won her love and he'll never let that—let _her—_go.

"One day," he says.


	12. Dear Daddy

Alice does a little mental-health exercise, and writes a letter to her father.

o…o

_Dear Dad,_

_It's probably a little funny to write you this letter. You'll never read it, after all, but I think it needs to be written._

_I hated you for a long, long time. I hated you, and I loved you, and I hated you again._

_You were my dad. You taught me the really important things in life—how many cookies had to be in the jar before Mom wouldn't notice we were stealing some, how to climb a tree, how to love a good story. You made me laugh, you let me cry._

_Everyone thinks their parents are immortal and won't ever die, but no one thinks they might wake up one day and find one of their parents gone. Just gone, disappeared._

_I thought you left us. I missed you so much it hurt. I cried for a long time. I kept wondering what I did wrong, why I was so bad that you left. I promised god a lot that I'd be good forever if you came back to us. But god never answered. And you never came back._

_Then I stopped missing you and started hating you._

_You left. There was some selfish reason for it—you were sick of us or you had another woman or there was some secret you didn't want us to know and you disappeared without a word. No answers, only questions. And I hated you for that._

_I hated you because you took over everything I did. I couldn't think about anything else in the world except finding you. You seeped into everything, __everything__ I did. That you weren't here affected everything. Ripples on a pond. I thought there was something wrong with me because you left, and because you were gone I thought everyone else would eventually find that thing that was wrong with me and leave me, too. Or I thought everyone else was screwed in the head and that everyone—every __man__—I came in contact with was a bad one just because of you._

_All roads, all problems led back to you._

_And then I loved you again because you were my dad and you were gone and you shouldn't have been gone._

_But you know what? I turned out okay. Mom had to be both parents, but she was good at it._

_Because you weren't here I learned how to defend myself and I learned how to teach other people to do the same thing._

_Because of you being gone I learned how not to depend on other people all the time._

_Because of you being gone, I met someone who's kind of perfect for me. I like to pretend you'd like him, too._

_Maybe I'd be strong even if you were still here. I think I would be. I'm too much like you and I'm too much like Mom not to be._

_I know it wasn't your idea. I know it wasn't your fault._

_I don't hate you anymore. I can't. You're my dad._

_But I never got to say it, so I'll say it here._

_Goodbye, Daddy._

_I love you._

_Alice _


	13. Lost in Translation

In the LiveJournal New Wonderland community, Vanilla212 suggested a fic in which 'courting' and 'dating' have two different meanings. I finally got off my butt to write it. I hope you enjoy!

o…o

"Hatter?"

He didn't answer.

"Hatter!"

Still no answer. Alice knew his mind wasn't occupied and he wasn't deeply engrossed in his book, largely because it was the repair manual for a breadmaker they didn't own—the manual was left in the flat when he moved in—and because it was upside-down. He was angry—not only wasn't he speaking to her and sulking, but he wasn't telling her _why, _either, in a startlingly bitchy fashion.

He'd been like this since they'd come back from her grandmother's birthday party that afternoon—it was the first big family function he'd been to and he was approximately polite and charming and played with the nieces and nephews and had conversation with all the adults and the cousins. They snuck off to kiss in the many nooks and crannies in the house. Things were going _great._

Until she introduced him to her Aunt Margo as the man she was currently dating, at which point it seemed like Hatter's Bitch Button had been pushed and he went into a sulk that lasted the rest of he party and the train ride home and well into the night.

Alice racked her brain for an answer—what was going on? She instinctively zoned in on her introduction: her _boyfriend._ The man she was _dating._ Was that too much, too soon for him? Ordinarily it'd be too much, too soon for _her,_ too. Usually the point of introducing each other to family members as boyfriend-and-girlfriend was her cue to _flee,_ but she never got that stifling must-run-now feeling with Hatter. To the contrary, they were moving quickly and it didn't feel quick enough for her. Three months into his new life here in New York, and she was already hoping to move in with him. They were planning on it, looking for something bigger than his studio hole-in-the-wall, someplace where they'd have a little more elbow room.

If moving in wasn't too much commitment, then why was _dating_ sending him into a foul mood?

She had no idea.

"All right, I give up—what's wrong?" She sighed, snatching the instruction manual away from him.

"You don't already know?"

"No, Hatter—I really, _really_ don't."

"You told your aunt—in front of your entire _family—_that we were… we were… _dating."_ He spat the word out like it was dirty. He looked at here with big eyes and a hurt expression, a kicked puppy. "Why, Alice? Why would you say that? In front of all those people, too! The least you could do was tell _me_ you felt that way first instead of just letting it out there in _public!_ D'you have any idea how humiliating that was?"

She had no idea what he was talking about and her utter bewilderment must have shown on her face.

"I thought I meant more than that—I thought _we_ meant more than that to you!"

"Of course you do!" She said back, resisting the urge to snap at him.

"Then why would you tell your whole _family_ that this wasn't serious? Are you…" his voice lowered and he looked down at his scuffed boots. "Are you ashamed of me, Alice? Because I'm from Wonderland—because I'm _different_ here?"

"Hatter," she said slowly. "Where in the _world_ are you getting these ideas? What gave you the impression I'm anything less than stupid in love with you?"

"You said we were dating," he said flatly, like that explained everything.

"So?"

"I thought I meant more to you than that."

"I love you, Hatter," she said. "What did you think I meant when I told them we were dating? Is it some kind of insult in Wonderland?"

He stopped and thought for a few minutes—she could practically _hear_ the gears in his head turning as he processed the thoughts.

"All right," he began. "What does it mean here? That word? When someone says that about someone, what does it mean?"

"Dating?" She asked; he cringed and nodded. "It means we're seeing each other. Exclusively. It means you're my boyfriend."

"Oh." His voice was low and sheepish and his face went pink with embarrassment as he realized there'd been something lost in translation.

"Why? What does it mean in Wonderland?"

"In Wonderland dating is a casual thing—you see each other a few times, you get wasted on Tea. You fuck in public and leave socks in each other's beds. A month at most and it's over and you go your separate ways forevermore. You can date two, three people at once because it's not exclusive. It's not… it's not a bad thing, it's just not permanent. _Really_ not permanent. I thought—I thought it meant you didn't see _us_ as permanent."

"Oh, Hatter," she sighed, sliding down next to him on the sofa. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and kissed the top of his head. "What word should I use from now on? So we can avoid this problem in future?"

"Courting."

She snorted with laughter into his hair, short and quick and inadvertent.

"What?" He asked, frowning and incredulous.

"_Courting?_ That's old-fashioned here!"

"Not in Wonderland it isn't," he said defensively. "In Wonderland, you _court_ someone you want to marry—"

They caught his slip at the same time and two sets of eyes went wide and they stared at each other, embarrassed and surprised. Hatter put a hand over his mouth.

"Oh," she said softly.

"Uhm."

"You want to marry me?"

"Uh—yeah. I do."

"Well," she grinned and sat back. "I think that ranks somewhere near the top for the most accidental marriage proposals ever."

"Alice?"

"Yeah?"

"Do you want to marry _me?"_

She kissed him and nuzzled his neck. "Yeah," she said. "Someday."


	14. Semiprecious

This idea popped into my head last night and wouldn't leave me be until I wrote it. I could probably expand it into a full fic but I don't know if I want to. Maybe one day.

o…o

Hatter comes to her world flat broke and jobless, with just a collection of hats and loud shirts to his name. Not the best of starts. What's worse—or maybe it's better, Alice isn't sure—is that he's totally honest about it with her mother. He spins Carol a tale about being back in town after a long absence and a bad breakup and is looking to start again, but he doesn't lie about being skint and unemployed.

Carol is unimpressed.

But Alice doesn't care.

After a few day's touching reunion—most of it spent curling the wallpaper in the one-bedroom studio hole where the former Resistance has agreed to house him—and Hatter goes job hunting. He does a lot of different things, whatever work he can find wherever he can find it. Coffee barista here, shop assistant there, clerical work elsewhere.

Part of his appeal is also part of what makes him downright infuriating: he's a little mad and a lot free-spirited, which mostly translates to eccentricities and a certain disinclination to play by the rules. He's also a spectacular bullshit artist and manages to talk himself into being hired in establishments where he has no business working. He tries his hand as a tailor, an interior decorator, and an executive personal assistant, among other things. Sometimes he manages to keep himself employed and keep up his charade for a while, but in the end he's always found out. As such he gets reprimanded a lot—and dismissed from—his many attempts at employment in her world.

Alice knows her mother is seeing him flit from one job to another and doesn't approve of it. She liked Jack a lot better. Jack, who was charming and clean-shaven and clean-cut, whose clothes and manner were quiet and conservative, and who said his family owned a few businesses while he was working at some cooperation or other. Hatter is twice as charming but less than a tenth as subtle. Carol doesn't see the same things in him as Alice does, and Alice supposes that during the beginning of their relationship, when she was a refugee in Wonderland and he was leering lecherously at her, she'd probably had the same opinion of him. She isn't being deliberately controlling or malevolent—she just wants what's best for her daughter and doesn't see David 'Hatter' Hargreaves as the best thing for her.

Hatter is an acquired taste, Alice thinks. Maybe he'll grow on her. Maybe he won't. In the end she decides she doesn't really care. Carol might be her mother but she doesn't run her life—in the end, the only opinion that matters is hers and Alice is fairytale in love with him.

When Alice announces she's moving in—into that studio crawl-space—with Hatter—who's just gotten fired from working at a jewellery boutique for telling a customer her prize heirloom diamond ring was a fake and cut more sloppily than plastic stemware—it drives the final wedge between her and her mother.

"He'll never be able to provide for you, Alice!" She argues. "He can't even support _himself!"_

Alice takes offense to that, because frankly it's a distinctly outdated 'Leave it to Beaver' approach to life, that she's supposed to be _taken care of_ by a _man._ "I don't need to be taken care of," she spits, never mind that she's never lived outside her mother's house, except at college.

After a few months the fires of the argument die down, but Hatter seems to have taken the blow the hardest.

"I could have, you know," he says. "In Wonderland, I could've taken care of you like you deserve to be. I had stuff there—granted it was mostly stolen or payment for something shady, but I could still have taken care of you properly."

"Hatter, it's all right. You don't have to babysit me. I wouldn't want you to."

But still he worries, like her mother's words might have some merit to them.

The months go by and by. Hatter buckles down and the next job he gets he _keeps,_ even though he hates being a bartender because it reminds him too much of peddling Oyster Tea. Alice tells him that if he's really unhappy there that he should look for another job, but he says he won't. The money is good and he's charming enough that he makes a lot in tips. It hurts her to see him lose so much of the spark in his eye, but her mother seems placated and that seems to be what Hatter's wanting: to prove himself worthy.

On their one-year anniversary, he nervously—uncharacteristically, Alice thinks, because nervousness isn't an emotion she associates with her Hatter—presents her with a ring. It's small and pale gold and set with a tiny diamond and there's no mistaking what that ring means, but instead of the urge to flee she throws herself into his arms and hugs him tight and kisses him breathless.

"Your mother's right. I can't offer you much," he pants. "Not here, anyway. It's not all you deserve and it's not a big diamond—"

"Don't say things like that," she says. "It's not true. It's perfect."

He grins a huge grin that goes all the way up to his eyes for the first time in goodness knows how long.

"No one but us matters and the ring doesn't matter. Make no mistake—_you're_ the real gem."


	15. The Wedding

I feel badly about neglecting 'Alice Ever After', but life (and some medical trouble) bit me in the ass and I've been otherwise occupied. I just have no drive lately, but I do feel badly leaving the Alice fandom untended. So I wrote this blurb up. Back when I was still writing 'Day to Day', this scene was going to be the intended ending. But I think it works well on its own, too. I hope you enjoy it.

o…o

Really, Alice thought, her mother deserved some happiness after spending so many years alone. Especially so many years worrying about her missing husband with no one but her—to quote Hatter—'fucking bloody-minded sprog' to keep her company. After Alice came back from her adventure in Wonderland and felt comfortable moving on with her life, it seemed like Carol finally felt all right doing the same thing; as if the only reason she held on for so long was because of _her._

The last year had been a roller-coaster of emotional turmoil, changes, fights, adjustments. Hearing that Carol decided to get remarried—to _Raymond Damm,_ JD's _father,_ of all people!—was a shock and came out of nowhere. The fact that they'd been seeing each other behind their collective six children's backs for years had just been the kick in the gut that sent all of them—Alice and JD, and JD's four siblings—into a state of shock. The one thing that pushed them out of their own madness was Hatter, who despite being quite mad had been the most sane and talked them down to earth.

That, after finally burying Robert Hamilton and letting him die, was a lot to deal with. For a little while, Alice felt betrayed, like her mother had been cheating on her father. But then, with Hatter's no-nonsense talk and a good verbal thrashing (and a lot of 'you're-being-immature!'), she realized how silly she was being and she welcomed Ray into their lives. If her Carol loved him, and was happy, and was ready to move forward with her life, then Alice was happy too.

Moving in with Hatter and moving on with her life was hard at first, for a commitment-phobic like Alice. It was a journey of new and unfamiliar ground, adjustments, arguments.

Strange how things had changed. What a year.

The party was still going strong, but was slowly winding down. The music was getting slower and softer and couples weren't so much dancing as they were just leaning on each other and swaying. Among the dancing couples was JD, dancing with… _Hatter._ One of the rather more amusing parts of the evening had been her old friend coming up and asking him, "You wanna dance—_baby?"_, to which Hatter's reply had been to down a glass of whiskey in one go and say, "What the hell, why not?" They took it in turn to lead and almost everyone having a good laugh.

And Alice was happy. Actually _happy,_ a feeling of quiet contentment washing over her and making her realize just how much her father's absence had dampened the previous years. She hadn't felt like this since before she could remember.

"All right?" Hatter patted her knee affectionately as he took his seat near her at their now-empty table. He looked… really dapper in his suit, dark grey with a red velvet waistcoat and matching hat with gold trim. But Hatter always looked dapper, so seeing him dressed up wasn't all that different than seeing him dressed normally. Normally for him, anyway.

"Mm," she hummed softly, nodding. "Just thinking."

"Sounds dangerous," he said, reaching forward to put his arm around her shoulders.

She smiled and traced a finger along the line of his jaw—he was clean-shaved, for once. "Always, my Hatter."

He pulled his hat back so he could plant a kiss on her cheek.

"My mom's happy," she said. _"I'm_ happy. It feels weird. I haven't been happy in so long."

"So am I, love."

"The wedding sort of has me thinking, too."

"What of?"

She nuzzled him. He smelled like spices and loose-leaf tea. "You, me. Us. You know, girly things."

"You wanna get married?"

_That_ one startled her. Was he proposing? Just asking about the distant future? Her answer burst from her lips before she could even think to stop it. "Hell no!"

He startled, but didn't look too rattled. He actually laughed, resting his forehead against her shoulder as he shook with mirth.

"It's just—I'm happy. With what we have now, you and me in the new flat. My life moving on. My mom moving on. I'm _happy_ with it. I like what we've got now. Someday, who knows—maybe we _will_ get married. But right now I don't want to."

"Fair enough, my pretty little pearl," he murmured. "I still love you."

"I love you, too."

They stared, doe-eyed and smiling soppily, at one another for several moments before they came to their senses and jerked apart.

"God, this is schmaltzy," she declared.

"Yeah, no kidding. Fancy slipping out under cover of the DJ?"

She looked around—the party was dying down and they could probably discreetly exit. "Think we'll be missed?"

"Oh, I doubt it. We're not the guests of honour, are we?"

"Where do we go?"

He thought for a moment. "Wonderland?" He suggested. She raised her eyebrows. "Well, just for a bit. See how things are going. See mad ol' Charlie, poke Jack until he squeals. We can be back by Monday morning."

Jack made her that offer once—go with him to Wonderland and come back on Monday morning. Back then she'd been a different person. Hesitant. Scared of his fast pace. But this wasn't Jack, nor was she the same person she'd been back then. This time, her answer was different.

"Okay. Let's go."


End file.
